OTTAWA — Government documents released Wednesday confirm that Canadian officials grappled with cases of alleged torture of detainees who were transferred by Canadian soldiers to Afghan authorities.

The long-awaited release of more than 4,000 pages of records instantly sparked a public-relations battle between the governing Tories and the opposition parties.

The government said the documents that have now been publicly released show — in their entirety — that Canadians never knew before they handed over a detainee that he or she could face torture.

The Tories and officials in Foreign Affairs and the Defence Department say that whenever instances of alleged abuse were reported, they were extensively investigated.

“Canadians serving in Afghanistan — military folks and civilians alike — have made sure that there is a robust monitoring system in place for Canadian-transferred Taliban prisoners,” said Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird. “We have acted quickly and effectively whenever an allegation of mistreatment has surfaced and we will continue to do so.”

But critics in the opposition benches say Afghan detainees were very likely tortured at the hands of known violent Afghan officials because of a lack of due diligence by the Canadians who passed them over.

Liberal MP Stephane Dion, a member of the small ad hoc committee that reviewed unredacted documents, told reporters “the likelihood was very high” that some had been tortured because of Canada’s shortcomings.

Canadian troops had always acted professionally, Dion said, but the government had failed to track the detainees it was transferring. When it finally did send inspectors to check on the detainees, the inspections were inadequate — at times even erratic, he said.

“They were not sufficient to really protect these hundreds of people,” Dion said.

The release of the records by the government came a year after the Conservatives, Liberals and Bloc Quebecois formed an ad hoc committee of MPs to review a massive number of uncensored documents — parliamentarians asked to view 40,000 pages. Their vetting was overseen by a panel of three judges who decided which information should be made public.

Government officials said Wednesday Canadian taxpayers paid $12 million for the process.

However, it’s possible that some of those costs were also connected to the government’s appearances at the Military Police Complaints Commission.

Some highlights of the documents:

Canadian officials noted that it had been “reported by multiple sources” that the governor of Kandahar maintained a private detention facility and that there had been consistent allegations of human rights violations.

A detainee reported to a Canadian official in November 2007 that he was beaten unconscious and whipped with electrical wire while in Afghanistan’s Sarposa Prison. The detainee showed a four-inch long bruise on his back. This event prompted Canada to start keeping track of detainees transferred by Canadian soldiers.

Canadian officials reported that the Afghan National Directorate of Security’s detainee holding facility had no toilet facilities, and detainees were kept in chain link leg irons in dark cells.

In an email to the Privy Council Office, a Canadian official in Kandahar talked about visiting one detainee in the Kandahar detention facility. The detainee talked about being told by Afghan guards “to ‘shut up’ and to stop asking so many questions” about the charges against him.

The same official said that he heard stories that the Afghan security officials would sometimes force detainees to stand for four to five days at a time or bat detainees with electric cables.

In July 2007, Canadian officials were surprised to learn that of 12 detainees they transferred to the Afghan officials, 10 were released without the knowledge of Canadian officials.

Last year, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government released some censored documents in response to opposition pressure. Then-speaker Peter Milliken ruled the government had breached the privileges of MPs by failing to release all the unredacted documents.

That led to the creation of the ad hoc committee, which the NDP boycotted, saying it was flawed.

As part of the arrangement, the government established a process last July to help ensure the MPs on the committee didn’t go too far in deciding which documents are made public.

The panel of three judges acted as arbiters to determine whether some documents should remain secret because their public release would jeopardize Canada’s national defence, international relations and national security.

The documents that have been released are far from complete. Only 4,000 pages were released, far short of the 40,000 pages that some had expected. A government official said Wednesday she could not say how many pages were reviewed because the committee’s work was done in secret.

Also, the panel of judges chose not to disclose any information over which the government claimed the protection of cabinet confidences, or made a real claim of solicitor-client privilege.

Also off-limits for public release were any documents in which the government or its officials criticized or made candid negative comments about Afghan institutions or Afghan officials. Sections were also blacked-out if they dealt with communications between foreign officials, the International Committee of the Red Cross and NATO.

Of the material that was released, there were extensive sections in which entire paragraphs — sometimes pages — are blacked out.

Throughout the documents, sections of sentences are replaced with the panel’s own summarized wording — a change which is intended to provide the reader a sense of what was being written, without providing too much detail that could violate national security.

NDP defence critic Jack Harris said the new documents provide MPs with no conclusions on the actions of the government and he urged the Tories to call a public inquiry.

“This is turning out to be a bit of a farce, an extremely expensive yearlong process that essentially kept Canadians in the dark for over a year,” he told reporters.

The Conservative government waited until late in the day to provide reporters with the 362 documents of more than 4,000 pages they had tabled in the House of Commons shortly after 3 p.m.

Baird said it was clear that the allegations of improper conduct “are unfounded and critics’ accusations of Canadian complicity with torture or even war crimes are simply not true.”

Greta Bossenmaier, deputy minister of the Afghanistan Task Force in the Privy Council Office, said the panel of judges that oversaw the ad hoc committee made “final and unreviewable” decisions about how much of the secret documents should be made public.

The members of the panel appointed a year ago are former Supreme Court of Canada justices Frank Iacobucci and Claire L’Heureux-Dube, and Donald I. Brenner, a former chief justice of the B.C. Supreme Court who died in March.

Senior Foreign Affairs diplomat David Mulroney, who was responsible for the Afghanistan issue in recent years, said the government acted properly when allegations of abuse or torture were made.

Mulroney said the “key issue” is whether Canadians “knowingly” transferred detainees who were tortured.

“We did not,” he said.

When an allegation did emerge, the government addressed the issue, Mulroney said, noting that in some instances, such as in late 2007, Canada temporarily suspended the transfer of detainees.

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